


if a ghost mixes a cocktail and no one's around to drink it, does it still make a sound?

by painting



Series: ghost up ghost out [3]
Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 11:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12530328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/painting/pseuds/painting
Summary: Charlie's at the fanciest club of his life, wearing the nicest clothes of his life, drinking the most expensive scotch of his life next to the most incredible boy he's ever met in his — well, you get the picture.





	if a ghost mixes a cocktail and no one's around to drink it, does it still make a sound?

**Author's Note:**

> this one is short and it is just a bit of a character push and some important moments

“What is this supposed to _be?_ ” Charlie asks. He's holding up an expensive crystal glass, glittering from the light of the chandeliers. It’s filled up mostly with the largest, most ridiculous handcrafted diamond of an ice cube he’s ever seen, carved to fit perfectly with the grooves and angles of the cup and then splashed over with some kind of dark liquor. The massive, useless ice cube knocks against his lips when he tries to take a sip.

Elijah holds out his hand palm-up and makes a beckoning motion, so Charlie hands him the glass. Elijah drinks from the glass and coughs.

“Scotch,” he says roughly, dipping his head toward his chest and trying not to cough on his tie as he hands the glass back to Charlie. “Wow. That’s…” He clears his throat. “That’s really…”

And he’s dryly sputtering again, this time turned away into the sleeve of his upper arm. It’s kind of cute, so Charlie saves him. “Strong?” he guesses.

“Good!” Elijah corrects once he gets himself together. “You don’t drink very much, Charlie, right?”

Charlie shakes his head ‘no’ and takes a sip in contradiction, almost like he’s trying to prove something (even though he doesn’t think he is). “Not really,” he says easily. He’s used to giving out reasons, though people stopped asking him so much about it after he’d actually turned 21 — people seemed to care less about alcohol in general once they became of-age. He doesn't bother lying to Elijah. “I don’t have a great reaction to it. I get really anxious.”

“Oh no!” Elijah says. His speech is vibrant now, a little louder than usual after a couple of cocktails, and he’s flushed across the upper part of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. “Oh no, I’m sorry. It’s okay. Do you want me to finish that one for you? Or we can set it down somewhere. Charlie, you really don’t have to drink anything, you—”

“No, no, no, it’s okay,” Charlie says. He tries to calm Elijah down by palming his shoulders and dragging his hands down Elijah’s upper arms, squeezing a little before he lets go. “I’ll be fine with just one.”

Corrine had hurriedly handed him the glass just a few moments ago, telling him it was high-class and given to her by one of the wealthier patrons who apparently hadn’t gotten word that she already had a date for the evening. Charlie’s never been in a bar this fancy before, the kind that plays jazz and has marble floors, but he feels like he should take advantage and at least taste the top-shelf liquor in case he doesn’t get a chance again until who knows when.

Charlie’s in the middle of taking his first sip when someone claps a hand to his back, their warm, heavy fingers curling over his right shoulder. Facing him, Elijah smiles and waves at someone right above Charlie’s head. A voice rumbles behind him, and Charlie plugs his left ear so he can hear them better.

“Are you guys, like, _ever_ not together?” It’s David. “I swear. Swear to God. I haven’t seen one of you without the other ever since you met.”

Charlie really swallows down the scotch this time. David pushes on his shoulder and stands between where Charlie and Elijah are seated at the bar, creating an uneven triangle.

“I like him,” Charlie says.

“Yeah, I bet you do,” David replies, moving to tug on Elijah’s hair a little. Elijah doesn’t seem to know what to do with it on most days, the part uneven near the middle with half of his curls flipping outward and the other half curling in. Tonight it’s a little tamer, brushed out and silky and not falling in his eyes so much, but Elijah smiles like all is right with the world when David messes it up. “Either of you dr _unk_ yet?”

“Nah,” Charlie says.

“Nah,” Elijah also says.

David grins. “Good,” he approves, straightening out one of his lapels. “This is the good stuff! Take it _slooooow_.”

“How long have _you_ been here, David?” Elijah asks. His voice cracks on David’s name, probably as a result of his fluctuating volume, though he seems as present as ever.

“Not long,” David says. “Twenty minutes, maybe? Corrine invited me super last minute.”

“Me too!” Charlie says. He’d gotten a text just that morning telling him that she had scored a few invites to a club on the upper west side of town called _Joseph_ , no apostrophe-S, just plain _Joseph_ as in Joseph the Carpenter, or Joseph Stalin, or Joseph and the Technicolor you know the rest. It’s one of those places that’s based on old money and attached to a hotel that nobody checks into anymore unless they’re attending a wedding. Which isn’t what this is, at least as far as Charlie knows, but he can’t say for sure.

“She only got the offer last night,” Elijah explains. He’s fidgeting on the bar stool a little, rocking back and forth. “One of our clients had to back out tonight, so the invited her to come check the place out. I think they want to use it as a reception venue in the winter. They’re super rich.”

“They trust Corrine’s judgment that much?” David asks.

“Oh yeah,” Elijah says. Sometimes he says _oh yeah_ with this really cheeky grin, like he’s about to make a joke and is pre-emptively pleased with himself about it, but he sounds serious this time. “They _love_ Corrine.”

“Everyone loves Corrine,” David says.

“Everyone’s _scared of_ Corrine,” Charlie corrects.

“Yeah, but they still love her,” Elijah says. “She’s scary in a way that makes you feel safe. She’s, um, _take charge!_ ” he says, deepening his voice a little in an imitation of someone Charlie doesn’t know but David apparently does, because he laughs right away.

“ _That woman’s got a real gusto on her!_ …Isn't that what he said?” David manages, using the same fake-deep voice, a little more growly than Elijah’s impression had been.

Elijah laughs too, brightly with his eyes crinkling. “There was this one guy,” he tells Charlie. “He called me and tried to leave, like, a review after working with me and Corrine.”

“I was there,” David adds. “He was on speaker.”

“Yeah! Yeah-yeah-yeah, yes, David was there and he was on speaker,” Elijah repeats. “And he spent like, fifteen minutes on the phone with me just calling Corrine brash and bossy but like in a million different coded ways. It was really. Uh. No one ever tries to review us but this guy…”

“Fuckin’ _this guy!_ ” David emphasizes.

“Fucking— yeah! Jesus. This guy. Charlie. The way he was talking. I think he had a fetish for dominant women, or something?”

“He did. He totally did.”

“He did! Right? So I wanted to start fucking with— messing with him—”

“But we needed the business,” David says. “Like, we already did the shoot but he hadn't paid us yet, so I was trying to do damage control and I—”

“David took the phone from me! God!” Elijah says. Usually he's conscious about talking over people, but now he’s all excited energy and loose limbs, moving his hands around as he talks. “Anyway, he isn't allowed to work with Corrine anymore. Sorry weirdo.”

“God, that guy sucked.”

“He did suck!” Charlie agrees, even though he hadn't been there. “Seriously, who does that?”

“Oh my god! Charlie! I know,” Elijah says. He leans over and grips Charlie’s hand, squeezes, then slowly lets go. His fingers are cold and smooth. “We told Corrine about him, like… Ah, watch out, there’s a freak out there with your number, y’know…”

“What’d she say?” Charlie asks.

“She thought it was funny,” David says. His gaze travels downward to Charlie and Elijah’s hands, now just an inch apart on the counter, and then reels back when Elijah gesticulates wildly.

“She! …Charlie.” He lowers his arms again. “She was so ready to call him again and screw with him too. I dunno why she didn’t. But now she just brings him up sometimes and makes, like, all these dominatrix photographer jokes? They’re really good. I can’t do them because, like,” he says, gesturing to the entire upper half of his body, face and hair included. “But they’re, like, so good.”

“God. Yeah, you should ask to hear one, man,” David says. He stands on his toes and looks past Charlie’s head. “Is Corrine around? Speaking of.”

Charlie nods his head toward the grand piano in the back of the room, where he last saw Corrine with her arm around a young woman with long red hair. The both of them were chatting to an older man who looked just as out of his element at _Joseph_ as Charlie felt. Corrine, on the other hand, who is twenty-four and almost definitely not a regular at the fanciest club on the West side of town, has been acting like she’s been coming here every night for the past fifty years. For as much as Charlie loves connecting with people, he can’t even begin to imagine how Corrine is probably, at most, two degrees of separation from literally everybody in town.

“Wow,” David says. “Who’s she with?”

“That’s Annalise,” Charlie tells him.

“Yeah. Annalise who is way-smarter-than-Corrine,” Elijah elaborates. “That’s how she’s been introducing her. _This is Annalise,_ ” he says, making his voice sound weirdly deeper for his Corrine impression, “ _she’s so much smarter than me. She’s a neurologist._ ”

“You sound _just like Corrine_ ,” Charlie says playfully. “Just absolutely spot on.”

“I know,” Elijah boasts. “I’ve been practicing for two decades.”

David claps a hand on Elijah’s back and bends his knees a little so that they’re at eye level. “I’m gonna go talk to the real Corrine,” he says, his voice friendly and a little louder because people’s voices always get louder just as they start saying goodbye. “I’ll catch up in a while!”

Elijah turns his head to watch David leave in the opposite direction that he came from, probably planning to circle around the center-counter and reach Corrine and Annalise by the end of his first round. The space is filling up quickly, mostly with middle-aged people dressed to the nines. Charlie tries his drink again by poking the fancy ice cylinder with his tongue and feeling the sting of alcohol on the tip of it, and when he looks up, he sees Elijah nursing his own cocktail and bouncing his leg.

Their eyes meet.

“Charlie,” Elijah says, leaning in closer. “I think I’m going to go into the hallway and look at the super riveting old photographs of ships on the walls out there. Do you want to come with me?”

Does he ever. “Yeah! That sounds—”

Elijah doesn’t wait for Charlie to wrap up his response. Instead, he grabs Charlie’s hand and pulls him right off of his barstool so forcefully that Charlie almost crashes into him. Charlie looks down and sees that Elijah’s sleeves are too short, his wrist bones poking out past the dark, muted fabric. He’s awkward maneuvering his way through the crowd, murmuring excuses and apologies every time he inevitably bumps into someone, but his voice is bright and Charlie sees him smiling every time he turns around to make sure that Charlie’s still following behind.

The air outside of the lounge is a lot clearer, less humid and stuffy without a crowd of people all breathing and pouring body heat into the same space. The carpet in the lobby is thin and patterned, the kind of old that can be steam-cleaned time and time again and still retain its vintage-dirty quality. Most of the furniture in the place is the same, including an old piano in the corner that doesn’t look like it’s been played in years, probably forgotten in lieu of the newer instrument back in the dining area, or ballroom, or whatever you’re supposed to call that part of a fancy bar named after a character from the Bible.

Charlie follows Elijah to a quiet hallway that’s lined with black and white photographs of ships on one side of the wall, just as Elijah was expecting, and vibrant pictures of fish on the other. Charlie nods at the line of fish, one hand in his pocket. “Which one’s your favorite?” he asks.

Elijah hums and tilts his head. Charlie watches his eyes go wide, darting quickly between each photograph, back and forth as he searches for his answer. He squints a little, pointing at a picture of a jellyfish, glowing neon purple and blue. “I think…” he says, then clears his throat and points at a group of clownfish. “That one. The family.”

“I think it’s called a school?” Charlie says.

“Yeah, the school. The family.”

“How come?” Charlie asks.

Elijah shrugs. “I dunno. They look pretty happy, don’t they?”

“They look like fish,” Charlie says.

“Yeah. Fish who are having a blast,” Elijah says. “Which one’s yours?”

“I like the jellyfish,” Charlie answers. He shakes his glass absently and hears the huge block of ice clink against the sides.

“Aw! Oh no. I shouldn’t have changed my answer. We could’ve been matching,” Elijah says.

“We’re complementary,” Charlie decides. Elijah smiles at him and suddenly he’s beaming. Charlie lifts his glass up to his mouth and takes a very small, useless sip, letting the alcohol splash against his lips. It tingles, and he doesn’t tilt the drink into his mouth enough for there to be any scotch for him to swallow down.

“Your, um. Your ice is melting,” Elijah observes.

“Oh yeah,” Charlie says. He rocks the glass back and forth a little and it clinks again, which must mean it’s at least a little watered down. He takes another sip, an actual mouthful this time, big enough to feel it burn going down his throat.

Elijah looks down at the glass and then back up into Charlie’s eyes, his eyelashes framing glowing blue, ears and cheeks pink from his own nervous energy and the heat of the crowd. “Can I try?” he asks.

Charlie lowers the glass, stretching out his arm a little. Elijah takes it from Charlie’s hand, then lowers his own arm and bends his elbow so that the glass is resting by his chest. After that, he steps closer to Charlie and kisses him.

Automatically, Charlie inhales and kisses back. He doesn’t even have to think about it. In fact, he’s not thinking at all. Charlie relaxes into the kiss like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever done, all of his thoughts and ideas and experiences exploding together and flying right out of his head so fast that it’s like he’s floating. He can feel Elijah’s face, smooth and firm and radiating heat beneath his right hand. He pulls Elijah closer with his left and he can hear the melting, pretentious ice crash against the sides of the cup Elijah’s holding, and Elijah stumbles forward. His hands move to Charlie’s hair and then he breaks contact, eyes wide and searching.

“I…” Elijah says.

Charlie doesn’t say anything, because he’s still empty-headed and waiting for his brain to snap out of it.

“Oh my god,” Elijah continues. “Are you okay? Was that o—”

And Charlie really, really doesn’t want him to panic, but he doesn’t know what to say so he kisses Elijah again. It seems to do the trick.

The second one is a lot quicker, more chaste, and when it’s over Charlie makes sure Elijah sees him smiling. “Ah,” he says.

Elijah smiles back. “One more,” he says. They connect.

Most of the time, Charlie and Elijah can’t seem to stop talking. Now, similarly, predictably, they can’t seem to stop kissing. Their uncharacteristic wordlessness is replaced by something newer, more primal, but just as fluid as their usual back-and-forth verbosity. Charlie isn’t surprised. It has always felt so easy with Elijah.

He doesn’t know how long they stand there like that, in between two rows of saltwater photography with a throng of rich people just down the hall and to the left while they explore each other’s mouths and listen to each other’s breathing. Elijah hums into Charlie’s mouth and it’s awesome. Then, he pulls back and they’re not kissing anymore, which Charlie hates.

“Hey,” he complains.

“I know!” Elijah says. “Ah. I know,” he repeats, a little quieter. “But we. Have… to be classy here?”

“Okay,” Charlie says. He looks past Elijah’s shoulder and makes a split second decision between the coat closet and the spare empty ballroom, then grabs Elijah’s hand and leads him further down the hall.

He remembers the scotch when Elijah sets it down on the floor as they enter the room. It’s no match for the miracle he feels in his veins.

**Author's Note:**

> so are they boyfriends yet or what


End file.
